India Considering Plans For Su-57 License Production: How Might a Deal Proceed?

Director of the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation Dmitry Shugayev has confirmed that the country is considering a proposal to manufacture Su-57 fifth generation fighters on its territory, adding that thiscould significantly expand India’s indigenous fighter production capabilities and strengthen defence ties between the two states. The report follows the fighter’s debut appearance in India at the Air India 2025 aerospace exhibition, subsequent reports that talks on the sale of the aircraft were underway. India has a long history of manufacturing Russian fighters domestically, and has produced at least 222 Su-30MKI ‘4+ generation’ fighters under license – an aircraft considered a direct predecessor to the Su-57. A primary factor reported to have caused earlier Indian apprehensions regarding the Su-57’s performance was the major delays in bringing the aircraft into service and the lack of operational experience in the Russian Air Force, which raised the likelihood that initial production aircraft could suffer from a wide range of bugs and defects. The scale of production has since expanded significantly, however, with the fighter having been put through entirely unique levels of combat testing among aircraft of its generation. Operations in the Ukrainian theatre have included air defence suppression, air to air combat, and operations in heavily defended enemy airspace, as well as a range of precision strike missions.

A number of features of the Su-57 make it particularly attractive for the Indian Air Force. The fighter is well optimised to operating in a network alongside the country’s ground based air defence network built around the S-400 system, and is expected to be valued as an elevated sensor to increase the network’s situational awareness. The Su-57 carries a larger main radar than any fighter class in the Western world, and four supplementary radars distributed across its airframe, allowing each fighter to track up to 60 targets simultaneously. Two of these radars integrated in its wing roots operate the L-band, optimising them for electronic warfare and for detection of stealth targets at longer ranges, which is particularly valuable if facing Chinese or Pakistani fifth generation fighter units. The Su-57’s primary class of air-to-air missile, the R-77M, utilises an active phased array antenna guidance system which provides it with a particularly wide ‘no escape range,’ making it optimal for engaging highly manoeuvrable targets such as Pakistan’s new Chinese supplied J-10C fighters. The Russian fifth generation fighter’s very long range and supercruise capabilities also allow the aircraft to loiter near potential conflict zones, respond quickly to contingencies far away from bases, and deploy deeper into Indian territory offering the fighter fleet a greater degree of strategic depth. The fighters are also particularly well optimised to operating from makeshift airfields, providing a high degree of flexibility in deployments.

Recently commenting on the possibility of India procuring Su-57s, expert on fifth generation fighter aviation and author of the book China’s Stealth Fighter: The J-20 ‘Mighty Dragon’ and the Growing Challenge to Western Air Dominance, Abraham Abrams, noted that it was likely that at least a small number of fighters would be procured ‘off the shelf’ from Russian production lines. At minimum, India would seek to lease Russian built fighters until license produced models became available. Abrams highlighted that this was likely due to the urgency of fielding such fighters by around 2029, as neighbouring Pakistan is poised to begin fielding advanced Chinese J-35 fifth generation fighters around that time. The Su-57 is considered India’s only viable option to procure a fifth generation fighter, as while it is one of four fighters of its generation in production two are produced in China with which the India maintains territorial disputes, while the third, the F-35, is produced in the United States which seriously limits the autonomy of the aircraft’s operators. Abrams notes that beyond license production, India may seek to reestablish a joint program to receive extensive transfers of Russian technologies and develop a heavily modified variant of the aircraft – likely with twin seats and largely indigenous avionics. This could entail production of a more standard lightly customised Su-57 variant in the interim, until production lines “covert to the jointly developed version once development and flight testing is complete, possibly in the 2030s.”